


Sorry About

by chchchchcherrybomb



Series: Sorry About [5]
Category: Dear Evan Hansen - Pasek & Paul/Levenson
Genre: Canon Compliant, F/M, Gen, Grief, Haircuts, Masturbation, Mourning, Screaming at your dead brother's grave
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-05-27
Updated: 2017-05-27
Packaged: 2018-11-05 14:35:42
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Underage
Chapters: 1
Words: 9,204
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11015397
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/chchchchcherrybomb/pseuds/chchchchcherrybomb
Summary: It's been nearly two years since he died. Zoe is going to leave for school in two weeks. Something needs to change.---Canon compliant, post-Finale oneshot.





	Sorry About

“I’m sorry honey, but you want me to do what?”

The hair stylist looked scandalised. Zoe sighed. “Cut it off. All of it.”

“But, sweetie,” The stylist was frowning at her in the mirror. “If it’s a bad break up....”

“It’s not,” She said, frowning at her own reflection. “I just… I need a change. I’ve needed it for a while.”

“If you just wanted it shaved, you could probably do yourself,” The stylist said frowning. “I’m not sure you understand how drastic of a change you’re asking for…”

Zoe rolled her eyes, yanking off the cape that was too snug around her neck. “Good point. I’ll do it myself. Thanks.” She grabbed her purse and keys from the hook on the wall and rushed out of the salon, flipping off the stylist as she did.

Asshole.

She should have known. The first thing he said to her was, “Don’t I know you from somewhere?”

Zoe had finally stopped seeing her face plastered all over twitter and facebook. The Buzzfeed article was the last one - it had been an interview with Alana about The Connor Project and the Orchard one year later. Zoe had been secretly pleased to see that the interviewer asked Alana, point blank, if the money wouldn’t have been better spent making sure that their town had accessible mental health services for teens. And pointed out the abuse directed toward Zoe and her family following the publication of the note.

They never told anyone it wasn’t actually Connor’s suicide note. By then it was too late.

Not that Zoe believed that Buzzfeed was like a beacon of responsible reporting, but if even they were pointing out that publishing someone’s suicide note went against literally every suggestion of standards and practices on how you’re supposed to talk about suicide in the media… then you knew it wasn’t great.

Not that Zoe had any issue with Alana herself.

Alana seemed… fine.

A little high strung.

A little too wrapped up in the importance of “the message” of The Connor Project that she seemed to forget that actual people got actually hurt.

Zoe sighed, walking back to her car. It was late, dark already. She’d called the salon last minute, scored their last appointment before they closed at 9:00.

The nail polish on her left hand was chipped. She ought to fix it.

She hung a left instead of a right which would take her home.

Instead, she headed to Target.

Zoe sort of liked the fluorescent lights and bright red accents all over the store. It was just the sort of artificial she was looking for in her life.

She walked purposefully to the men’s grooming section until her hand fell on a cheap hair clipper. She grabbed it without hesitation. Picked up a few other things in other nearby aisles, hair scissors and a comb, and hurried away. She liked the store, she knew it was late, but she had become an expert at trying to avoid people these days.

Where she did pause was the nail polish aisle.

She grabbed a bottle of ninety-nine cent black nail polish without thinking. Just automatically. She didn’t usually wear black on her nails, but. Well.

Zoe hurried toward the checkout counter as the PA system reminded everyone that the store closed at 10:00.

She set her things down on the conveyor belt, eyes trained on her purse as she fished out her wallet.

“Zoe?”

She looked up at the cashier.

Of course today would be the day she would run into Jared Kleinman. “You work at Target?” She said, surprising herself with the coarseness of her tone.

“Um. Yeah. Hi,” He said, ringing her stuff through. “How’s your summer?”

“Fine. Yours?”

“Fine,” Jared said, nodding. “Heading back to school in a few weeks.”

“Cool,” Zoe said, trying not to sound especially disdainful.

“Did you… decide where you’re going yet?”

“Yeah,” Zoe said, and she knew that she didn’t need to be rude to him to exit this situation fast, she didn’t owe him anything especially not a conversation, she knew she could just let this all end painlessly without mentioning it but the next thing out of her mouth was, “Do you still talk to Evan?”

Jared swallowed audibly. “Yeah.”

“I saw him a few months ago,” She said, like oh yeah this was just a normal conversation, talking about your ex who totally lied to you for the whole of your relationship to his friend while he rings you up in Target. Super typical.

“Yeah?”

“He seemed… better,” Zoe said. She didn’t know why. She didn’t know what the hell was wrong with her, chatting with Jared Kleinman in a Target like any of this was remotely normal.

“Yeah, I think he’s… been doing better lately.”

“Good.”

“Yeah… um. It’s…. It’s $39.78, by the way.”

Zoe swiped her card, and then waved absently to Jared as she took her items.

“Wait,” Jared said, and Zoe stopped. He stepped out from behind the register, switching off his light. “I um. I never really said anything before but… I’m really sorry. About, just. All of the shit that happened last year. It was… it was really fucked. The whole thing, and I. I’m just sorry.”

Zoe didn’t know what to make of that. She knew now that Jared had definitely been involved, had helped to write the fake emails, that was obvious as soon as the truth came out. “Thanks Jared.”

She walked out of the store without looking back.  

* * *

 

Once Zoe was certain that her parents were asleep downstairs, she took her supplies and went into the upstairs bathroom. She stared at her face in the mirror. The sleepy hazel eyes, the pale skin, the dry lips.

She sighed, and brushed out her long hair. It had gotten way too long. She used to think of it as like, proper mermaid length… just long enough that it would cover her boobs if she needed it to. But now it was just. Insane. Too long. Parts of it almost reached the bottom of her ribcage. She just kept brushing and brushing. She brushed it until it was smooth and shiny. The exact image she had spent all of high school trying to project outward. Smooth, shiny, and fine.

Then she tied it back with a hair tie.

Or tried to. The hair tie, which was pretty beat up by now, snapped as she pulled it off of her wrist.

_Shit._

She had known she was planning this for a while, since graduation, but she wanted to wait until her summer job at the music day camp ended.  She hadn’t bought any more hair ties for this exact reason. She couldn’t very well barge into her parents’ en suite bathroom and take one from her mom, because then she’d wake them up and they’d freak out about her cutting her hair. They were only just now starting to calm down and stop assuming they were going to find her in the bath, having slashed her wrists or something.

Zoe sighed.

Walked out of the bathroom.

Down the hall, making a left when she ought to have made a right to turn into her bedroom.

It was weird now, how they kept the door open all the time.

He wouldn’t have wanted it open. He kept it closed, and locked for a while until their parents took the lock off after he went to rehab.

The sign on the door still hung there. Stay Out - Private Property. Zoe had thought the sign was funny when he hung it up as a freshman in high school. She knew he’d probably stolen it from a neighbor or something, but when she was nearly fourteen she still thought her brother was just a kind of funny weirdo at heart, even though he was always screaming at her to leave him alone. She just thought it was a phase, like the one she went through where wore flower crowns all of the time. He was just a weirdo going through a phase. The kind who would steal a private property sign for his obviously not-private bedroom.

Especially not private anymore. Now the door was always open.

But Zoe was on a mission and she didn’t want to spend a lot of time loitering or lingering as she stepped into the room.

She also trained her eyes away from the back wall. She didn’t like the image in her head of him hanging there. She’d been standing in the hall when her dad opened the door, yelling about dinner.

Zoe blinked and went straight to the dresser, top drawer. Inside, among the clean socks and folded up boxers, Zoe found a pack of hair ties. She frowned. These had definitely been hers.

She rolled her eyes.

He was always taking her stuff. Thief.

She paused for a second, realizing that Connor’s wallet and cell phone were still sitting on the top of his dresser. Just like he had put them down there before bed, intending to pick the up in the morning.

She looked cautiously over a the bed, like maybe Connor was actually there and he was going to start screaming at her to get the fuck out of his bedroom and quit touching his stuff, like he always did.

But Connor wasn’t there to tell her to go away anymore.

Zoe flipped the phone over. The screen was cracked. It didn’t turn on; it had probably been dead for over a year and a half. She pocketed the phone, deciding she would charge it. See if there was anything on there worth saving. She thought her mom had probably gone through it already. And that she’d probably cancelled his phone plan by now. It had been over a year.

She opened the wallet then. She knew there probably wouldn’t be anything worth finding in there. No drugs or condoms or whatever. Her mom and dad had gone through all of his stuff at the advice of a grief counselor a few months back. Processing or something.

Her brain paused for a second, nose wrinkling, at the thought of her brother having condoms on him. She knew it was the sort of thing that boys did sometimes, but that was her dead brother and it was still a really gross thought. She’d never seen him with any girls. Or boys, for that matter (Zoe had always wondered about him, what was going on with him, was he gay? Their dad was always accusing him of being gay). But still.

Zoe remembered seeing a few comments from girls on the facebook page for The Connor Project saying how hot they thought he was. At the time, all Zoe could think was that they should have seen him in the casket. How gross he had looked hanging in his bedroom before their dad had pulled him down, screaming at Zoe to call 911 even though it was pretty obvious that it was too late for that. Zoe knew immediately because in addition to the fact that he wasn’t moving, he’d pissed himself. Not a lot, but enough that his pants were wet at the crotch.

Jesus.

She shook her head, hair floating into her vision. Shaking herself out of it.

Zoe smiled slightly at Connor’s expression on his license photo. She had teased him at the time that it looked like a mugshot. She still thought that. He wasn’t smiling, his hair was a weird in between length, somewhere around his chin, curly and wild. She forgot that he had started to grow it out right as he turned sixteen. In her mind his hair had always been long, even though she knew that wasn’t objectively true.

The driver’s license read “CONNOR L MURPHY” in block print, followed by their address. Under it there were two dates, one highlighted in red and the second highlighted in yellow. The first read, “TURNS 18 ON” with the date of what would have been Connor’s eighteenth birthday. He never made it to that date. The second one would have been his twenty first birthday. Zoe frowned. He wouldn’t see that either.

There wasn’t much else in the wallet. A credit card, expired already. Two dollars in cash. Nothing else. Zoe put the wallet back.

Then, reaching back into the top drawer, she took two hair ties, looped them over her wrist and headed quickly out the door and back to the bathroom.

She took the brush to her hair again, this time separating it into two ponytails. She pulled the scissors from the packaging, took a breath, locked eyes with her reflection, and cut. It long took two snips.

The hair came away easily.

She could still see pieces she had bleached from when she had put the indigo streaks in her hair.

Of course Evan had liked her hair that way. Told her all about how Connor thought it looked cool. She should have known. Connor had rolled his eyes at her when she’d done it.

Zoe shook her head. _Don’t think about it._

Took another breath. And cut off the second ponytail.

It was like the tight band around her chest that had made breathing so difficult for the past… however long had finally snapped. She filled her lungs greedily, her eyes almost tearing up in relief.

In her hand, her hair looked sort of… dull. Not pretty or nice or lively or in any way a real part of her.

She looked at her reflection. The cut was sort of a chop job, uneven and wonky and sticking up in places. She’d have to fix that.

She opened the box with the clippers. Plugged it into the wall.

Paused for a second, then decided to grab a towel to catch the debris. She threw the towel over her shoulders.

Zoe’s eyes met her reflection’s. Her face looked more determined and sure that Zoe thought she actually was, but she took that a sign.

Fake it until you make it.

More like fake it until you feel it, Zoe thought.

She took the clippers to her head and sheared off her hair. Like she was a sheep. Like she was a snake, shedding her skin. She was removing the physical proof of her past, cutting it off, making it disappear.

She had a nice head, Zoe realized as she finished, checking the back of her head for any missed spots with a second, handheld mirror. It wasn’t bumpy or weird, there were no hidden birthmarks under her hair. She looked okay like that, with her hair buzzed down. Like Furiosa or G.I. Jane.

Zoe practiced a smile in the mirror.

She thought she might even look like herself.

She swept up the hair in the bathroom, dumping it into the small trash can.

She switched off the light, breathing easier, and went into her bedroom.

In the mirror in there, Zoe didn’t look like herself. In fact, she thought as she changed into a big t-shirt, taking off her jeans and bra, she looked kind of like a little boy with a buzz cut.

She stopped then.

She knew a little boy with a buzz cut once.

Zoe doubted there were any pictures of that haircut. Connor had absolutely hated it. Zoe was pretty sure he had cried when their dad brought him home from the barber’s, even though he was thirteen and way too old to be crying over something as silly as hair.

Zoe had never realized that they looked alike until this moment. The eyes, especially. They didn’t have the same color eyes - Connor’s had been more blue, but. They looked alike. Same shape, similar colors, same dark lashes.

Zoe went to tuck her hair behind her ear habitually, and grinned sheepishly at her reflection when there was no hair to do that with.

She stooped down to her jeans, pulling Connor’s broken iPhone out of the pocket and plugging it into her charger. There probably wasn’t anything on there. But she was curious.

She kept trying to move hair out of her face but it wasn’t there. It was gone.

Zoe smiled.

The shorn hair on her head was soft, like velvet. She ran her hand over it a few times as she climbed into bed.

She drifted off thinking how strange not to have a waterfall of hair spread out over her pillow.

 

Zoe woke up suddenly, the sun still not up, drenched in sweat. The window was open, a cool breeze floating in, but she felt scorching hot. As she pulled the blankets away, she felt her body erupt in goosebumps. She shivered. Her nipples got hard.

This still happened sometimes.

Her face was flushed, she could tell.

Zoe wished she could just have nightmares like a normal person. Just dream about finding her dead brother’s body and wake up screaming like any other girl might.

Instead she had sex dreams.

Just all of the time.

Constant, unending, sex dreams about Evan.

It was maddening.

Almost as maddening as how much she still missed him. Their relationship had been very short, and it had been over nearly twice that length by now, but she missed him.

Zoe recalled how stupid she felt when Evan admitted having never been Connor’s friend at all. How small and idiotic. She thought that she _loved_ him. She’d lost her _virginity_ to him, cried afterward, saying something about how grateful she was that she had found him. And he had gotten a little choked up after she said that. Could barely look at her.

She assumed he was equally overwhelmed about the sex thing. He had buried his head in her neck, in her hair, and she liked how close he was then. He was never this close to her, even when they kissed. His whole body seemed to relax when it was pressed against hers.

She thought it was the sex that had rendered him speechless.

Apparently not.

Jesus.

And now she had sex dreams about him. Dirty, vivid sex dreams.

Sometimes it was just a play by play of the last time they’d done it, in Evan’s bedroom on his twin bed, his face screwed up in concentration, Zoe no longer bothering to be shy about her body, stripping off her clothes fast, begging him to touch her before his mom got home.

Zoe’s face burned in the dark.

She wished it had never happened.

She wished she could take it back, just lose her virginity to a frat boy at a party like every other girl she knew.

But she couldn’t and she was left with this absence, this ache, this mistake.

Zoe let her eyes wander to the door.

It was close to five in the morning. Nobody was awake.

She got herself off with her hand, biting the inside of her cheek and lip to keep from making noise, hating herself for how wet she got, for how her toes curled, for how fast she finished. She was just disgusted with herself. The guy had literally manipulated all of them, manipulated her into bed, and yet here she was, indulging in these strange sex fantasies with his memory.  

She wished she could just stop thinking about the sex. It was really, really fucking with her. And it wasn’t like she could talk to her friends about it, at least not all of it. Fantasies about your ex would make sense, but fantasies about the guy who had pretended to be your dead brother’s best friend and got famous for it who was also your ex?

Pretty fucking specific.

Thank god her mom had put her on the pill when she was fifteen because her period cramps were so terrible. Zoe would have probably killed herself if she found out she had been pregnant with Evan’s baby.

Zoe sat up then.

She…

She felt the need to take that thought back, even though nobody would, like, hear it.

She wouldn’t do that.

She wouldn’t.

She.

Her mom would die if something were to happen to her. Her dad might too. If both of them were gone, Zoe imagined, then both of their parents would be too.

She couldn’t do that.

She flopped back onto the mattress, willing herself to go to sleep.

Zoe rolled over a few minutes later, not used to the way she could feel the whole of her cotton pillow case on her head.

So sleep was out.

She got up, switching on the light by her bed.

On the bedside table, Connor’s phone was charging.

She picked it up. Switched it on.

It took a few minutes, but eventually the cracked screen showed his lock screen. Some generic photo of a forest.

For about fifteen seconds, Zoe’s heart stopped looking at those trees.

….Had Connor actually liked trees? She had no idea.

She had to guess a few times to get his password right. It wasn’t his birthday or their house number. She got it right with, of all things, 1234.

Of fucking course.

The background was the same as the lockscreen. Just a stock photo of trees.

The facebook icon, now that the phone was connected to the wifi, had over a thousand notifications.

Tons of people had commented on his facebook after he died.

Zoe disregarded that after a brief moment where she considered fucking with people. They had never bothered to disable his account, and Zoe debated, like, sending Evan a friend request or something, just to be a jerk.

But then she imagined he’d get upset and cry and whatever, so she didn’t.

So she ignored facebook.

Zoe climbed out of bed.

She got dressed in the jeans she had worn the day before, shoving Connor’s phone into her back pocket and just…

She grabbed her keys. Shoved her feet into the flipflops by the door, and rushed into the car.

She couldn’t look at the phone here.

Zoe couldn’t be alone when she did it.

She had the keys in the ignition before she realized she didn’t have a single person who she could wake at five in the morning to go through her dead brother’s phone with.

Fuck it, Zoe thought. She drove off, the first thought in her head being to go to the orchard… the second being the cemetery.

Not a lot going on there at five in the morning.

It took her a while to find his headstone because she had only been to visit it a few times, and her parents had always driven.

The sun was peaking over the horizon as Zoe pulled up, parking her car.

It was a simple headstone. Her parents had argued so much about what to put on it; she was glad at least that the final order hadn’t been placed until after everything with Evan happened. Otherwise it probably would have had some bullshit quote about orchards and friendship on it.

Instead it just said his name and dates.

CONNOR L. MURPHY.

Zoe had had tried to get them to drop the middle initial. His middle name had been Lawrence, for fuck’s sake. That wasn’t how he ought to have been remembered.

She realized that she should have brought something. Last time, their mom had brought flowers. Zoe felt idiotically empty handed.

So she stalked over to a grave that had a mass of flowers dying in front of it, a few rows away. She snagged the best looking of the lilies and brought it over, thinking that stealing a flower off of someone else’s grave was probably something Connor might have thought was funny.

She set the flower down, taking Connor’s phone out of her pocket and sitting down on the damp grass. She frowned then, realizing that she was sitting on top of the place where they buried him. It made her uncomfortable, realizing she was literally on top of his bones.

That was fucked.

You weren’t supposed to go through that at eighteen.

She looked awkwardly at the headstone. “Don’t get mad at for going through your stuff,” She mumbled. “You shouldn’t have left it if you didn’t want people to mess with it.”

Because Zoe was apparently the type of person who chatted with gravestones now.

She unlocked the phone again, and selected the messages app.

A few texts, months old at the time Connor died from someone in his phone just labeled “Chris.” Zoe read them. Super generic, just places and times.

Probably his dealer then. All of the places were inconspicuous and random.

There was another few from someone in his phone as “Dave.” The last one read, “Bro, surprised not to see you at meetings lately.”

Zoe checked the date.

Two weeks after he died.

She hadn’t known anybody named Dave. She read his other messages, but they didn’t make sense to her.

Until she found an exchange from the end of the summer…

Two summers ago now.

“One hundred and five days and clean as a whistle. How’re you holding up?” from Dave.

“Fuck you,” From Connor.

Followed by an exchange of emojis that ended with a message from Connor with a frowning face and a gun, making it look like the emoji was shooting itself.

So. Dave must have been from rehab.

Zoe didn’t like realizing that she didn’t know about him.

She scrolled to the last texts they had exchanged.

Hers, to him, from that first day of school. His last day of school. “I’m in the parking lot, where are you?”

Zoe’s heart leapt into her throat again as she realized there was a draft, unsent.

It just said: “Sorry about”

No punctuation.

Nothing.

She had no idea what he had been trying to apologize for. But Connor never, ever apologized. Ever. The last one she could recall was when he was like thirteen and ripped up her diary.

And he was in the middle of texting her.

Or started to and stopped.

But started with “Sorry.”

And then she was crying, just crying. She would never ever know what he was sorry about. Sorry for finishing the milk that morning, sorry for ruining everything, sorry for having been a jerk to her…?

She would never get to know.

She scrolled through their other messages. They were short, choppy, usually rude from both sides.

There had to be more, more things in this phone that she didn’t know.

She swallowed, wiping her face.

“What the fuck, Connor?” she murmured. And got no reply. Obviously.

No reminders in his phone, not even an outgoing voicemail message. She was starting to forget his voice.

She opened the notes app.

She was surprised to find a list open.

The list simply read, “Pills, gun, jumping, belt*?”

Zoe’s heart gave a squeeze.

God.

Belt had a star. She supposed he had decided on that one.

She opened the other notes, one of them was his schedule for senior year. Zoe hadn’t realized he had been signed up for two AP classes. He only made it to one day of school that year. She wondered, suddenly, if he hadn’t planned it much at all. If he just… decided that night or something. Walked in from school and kicked out his desk chair.

The last one she opened said, “Fuck this.”

Zoe had no idea what “this” referred to.

She kept wiping her face.

She opened up photos, wondering if he had anything in there.

There wasn’t a lot. He’d had this phone for a few years, but there was only about ten photos in there. She supposed having no friends might have made taking pictures less of a priority. No selfies, no shots of food. Just three photos of ( _you’ve got to be fucking kidding me)_  trees. One of a cat that Zoe didn’t recognize, two of dogs she thought belonged to their neighbors.

And the last four.

Were of Zoe and Connor, at the mall.

God, they were old photos.

Zoe remembered taking them together. It was like the one truce they called in the whole of high school.

She was totally freaking out.

Stephanie Perkins, the coolest girl in the freshman class, had invited Zoe to her birthday party last minute, and Zoe didn’t have time to convince her mom to take her to the mall during the week.

Connor had just gotten his license.

And Zoe was pretty desperate not to look like an idiot at this party. She pounded on his door on Saturday afternoon.

“What?”

“I need a ride to the mall,” She said desperately, trying to sound nice so he’d agree.

“Ask mom.”

“She’s at some kind of… meditation thing.”

“Ask dad.”

“Connor please?”

Connor rolled his eyes. “No.”

“Please, Connor? Please? I have to get a birthday present for Stephanie Perkins’s birthday party. It’s tonight. I totally spaced. Please?”

He stared at her for a long time. She gave him her best puppy dog eyes. It was the first conversation they had without screaming at each other in at least a month. “Fine.”

“Seriously?” She hadn’t expected it to work.

“Yeah, fine, whatever. Do you want to go now?”

She nodded vigorously.

“Fine.” He swung his legs off of the bed, standing and grabbing his keys from the side table. Zoe realized suddenly how tall he had gotten. He was going to crack six feet tall, easy.

She ran to her room and grabbed her purse, meeting Connor at the foot of the stairs. “Ready?” he muttered.

“Yeah.”

He sighed, pulling the sleeves of his hoodie down over his hands and heading out the front door. He jiggled the keys in his hands anxiously, unlocking his new car with a beep. He had protested getting a car, swearing he didn’t need one, but his parents had gotten him a three year old blue sedan. Zoe pulled open the passenger seat, climbing in and pulling the seatbelt across her chest.

Connor got in, started the car, pulled on his seatbelt and sat there for a second. “Music?” he mumbled. He was always mumbling. It was like he forgot how to talk properly or something.

“Sure.”

“You pick,” he said, backing carefully out of the driveway.

Zoe pulled her old iPod out of her bag, fiddling around with it and plugging it into the aux cord when she was finally satisfied. She pressed play and the car filled with the Lumineers.

Zoe was surprised that Connor wasn’t, like, totally bad at driving. She’d only ridden with him once before, on the way back from a family trip to visit some cousins over the summer when he had only had his permit. Their dad kept criticizing everything Connor did; he bitched about how Connor checked his blind spots, used his turn signals, the speed he was going. After about thirty minutes, Connor apparently decided that enough was enough because he pulled the car over on the side of the four lane highway and jumped out of the driver’s seat. Zoe had just put her earbuds in and turned up her music as loud as she could stand to drown out the noise of them screaming at each other on the side of a four lane highway. Their dad had driven the rest of the way home, Connor sitting stone faced and silent in the back with her.

But now he did the speed limit. He checked his mirrors frequently. Kept the windows up and didn’t talk much.

Zoe assumed he didn’t talk much because he hated her, hated driving, or maybe a combination of both.

“What store?” He asked her as they pulled up toward the mall and he started looking for a spot to park.

“Um… Forever 21?”

“Okay.”

He pulled into a spot, putting the car in park and sighing. “Do you know how long you’ll be? I might go hang out at the bookstore or something.”

Zoe thought was probably a good idea, but for whatever reason the next words out of her mouth were, “Come with me.”

Connor narrowed his eyes. “No.”

“If you come with me, I’ll… buy you a pretzel or something?”

Connors scoffed. “Man, you really don’t want to go in there alone, huh?”

Zoe felt her face heat up. “Nevermind, whatever, I’ll text you when I’m done-”

“No, I’ll-” He stopped, looking embarrassed. “I’ll go.”

Zoe blinked in surprise. “Okay.”

She led the way to the store. Even at the mall she knew people were staring at them. Well. At Connor at least. He was in all black even though it was still like a balmy seventy five outside. Zoe was still wearing shorts. But he was in black jeans, a black t-shirt, a black hoodie, and these black combat boots that their mom had gotten him for his birthday. Zoe thought that might have been the last time he smiled in front of people. He was fucking depressing to be around these days, Zoe thought.  

It was the first time she noticed that his fingernails were painted black as well.

Weird.

Zoe didn’t say anything about it.

She was afraid if she said something about it, he’d totally freak out and be super emo about it for days. The last thing Zoe needed was to find out her freak brother was like cutting himself of whatever other weird shit kids like him did.

“So… what are are you looking for?” Connor asked.

Zoe looked thoughtful. “I don’t want to get her something impersonal like a gift card, because then it looks like I didn’t get her anything until the last minute, you know?”

Connor shrugged.

Obviously he didn’t. Connor didn’t have any friends. He hadn’t been invited to a birthday party in so long that Zoe had kind of forgotten he used to get invited to things.

“Just something small, I dunno,” she said, shrugging.

He nodded, following her into the Forever 21. She headed to the rack of t-shirts toward the back, flicking through it at top speed, determined to find something perfect.

“Are you even looking at those?” Connor said, raising an eyebrow. He was sort of staring at an acid washed t-shirt that said “GIRL POWER” and had a bunch of holes in the shoulder.

“Yeah, but I’m in a hurry. You could _help._ ”

“I don’t know Stephanie.”

“Just, like, look for something you think _I_ would like.”

Connor rolled his eyes, and Zoe was surprised to see he started sort of shifting through the other side of the rack.

Eventually he pulled out a periwinkle blue floral top and sort of awkwardly thrust it at Zoe.

She eyed it, expecting to find something supremely wrong with it. It was a good pick. It was even the right size. “Thanks,” She said, trying to smile at him as he shoved his hands into the pockets of his hoodie. “I’m going to go look at accessories.”

“Okay.”

She led the way across the large store, humming along to the remixed song being blasted over the PA system. Connor following, his elbows pulled in, his eyes sort of down. At least he looked as uncomfortable with how much he stuck out. That was sort of a relief; sometimes Zoe wondered if he was just stupid.

“I need to get something that goes with this top,” she explained.

He nodded kind of vaguely.

She started looking at earrings and Connor sort of floated over toward the hair stuff.

Maybe he was gay, Zoe thought. He certainly picked a top out fast enough for her.

Zoe frowned a little. Their dad would _hate_ that.

But then again, having a gay brother might be kind of cool.

Zoe migrated over toward the hair stuff, where Connor was kind of scowling at a pack of hair elastics.

Zoe laughed at his expression and, moving quickly, stuck a flower crown on his head.

“What the hell?” He said, looking surprised.

“Good look on you, bro. Very soft grunge.”

He crossed his arms, rolling his eyes.

Zoe smirked, throwing a flower crown on her head too. “Let’s take a picture together.”

“No.”

“We have, like, literally no pictures together.” She pulled out her phone, and then frowned. It was dead. She’d forgotten to charge it. “Or not.”

Connor sighed heavily, but, apparently humoring her, pulled his own phone out of his pocket.

Zoe threw an arm around him, taking the phone out of his hand and snapping a few selfies. He wasn’t really smiling in any of them, but still. It was the first picture of the two of them together in a long time. Like ages.

“I think I’ll get Steph these,” Zoe said, pointing out a pair of dangly earrings.

Connor nodded.

He followed her to the checkout counter and waited while she paid.

They walked back out through the mall. Zoe insisted on buying him a pretzel as a thank you for the ride.

He bought her one too, but didn’t say why. They sat and ate their pretzels in the food court. Zoe let herself imagine a universe where they did this a lot. Went shopping, hung out at the mall, drove places together, got lunch or something.

She didn’t hate the idea.

She was always insanely envious of her friends who were close to their brothers and sisters.

“What time is your party?” Connor asked.

“Starts at seven.”

He looked at his phone. “It’s five thirty. We should go.”

“Okay.”

They finished their pretzels and headed back to the car. “Do you need a ride to the party?” Connor asked, fidgeting with his keys.

“I was going to ask mom.”

He nodded. “I get it.”

And suddenly Zoe felt just so. Fucking. Sad for him. Like he knew immediately why she didn’t want him dropping her off, like he knew her brain was counting out the ways she’d look like a social pariah if he did. “But… sure. If you wanna.”

He nodded.

But of course the moment didn’t last. At home, their dad got pissed at Connor for taking the car without telling their parents where he was going. Connor just rolled his eyes, heading upstairs and slamming the door. He didn’t come out even when their mom called him for dinner.

Six thirty came and went, and Zoe didn’t bother knocking to take him up on the ride offer. She just asked her mom, who dropped her off with a smile.

By the next day they were back to screaming at each other.

She called him an asshole when he played music too loud, he called her a bitch when she pulled her electric guitar out and practiced so loudly that you couldn’t hear his stereo.

 

Zoe stared at the selfies on his phone. The pair of them, looking so fucking young, wearing stupid plastic flower crowns.

She’d lied when she said there had been no good times.

There weren’t a lot but.

It wasn’t fair to say that.

To call him a monster.

She had just been so fucking angry at him at the time. For doing this to them, for doing this to himself.

She still was.

But she also remembered how he seemed to wear sadness like a heavy jacket. He never took it off. He never seemed free of it

She maybe, after these past two years, understood a little better. Why.

“Sorry about…” She started, staring hard at his name. “What the hell were you sorry about?”

“For fuck’s sake, Zo, don’t get all sympathetic on me _now._ ”

She jumped, whipping around. “What the fuck?”

But she realized, of course, that it was just her imagination. There weren’t ghosts, there was no way for her to know any of the things she needed to know.

But despite that, the words just spilled out of her. “I… wanted to believe what he said about you because it made it easier… If I could pretend you were just some… sad kid who hung out with another sad kid… If I believed that you cared about someone like Evan, then I could. Understand you better. Because I cared about him too…” She took a shuddering breath. “I fucking loved him. And when I read those emails, I thought… I know it wasn’t true. I know that now. But I. I wanted it to be true. I wanted… I think you would have liked him, honestly. If you. If you knew him.”

A light breeze blew, rustling the trees around the cemetery. “I slept with him. Evan. I… I’ve literally never told anybody.”

“I loved him,” She said, wiping her eyes. “I loved the idea that he cared about you, about me, that he got along with mom and dad…”

“Fuck. I liked him because he made me think that if… if you hadn’t... That you and I might have. Been. Closer. Gotten along.”

“You… you were a mess, Connor. A selfish fucking disaster. But… but.” She balled her fists up tightly. “I knew you were sick. We all knew. Even dad, even though he just lived in denial forever. But I just… I was like dad. I blamed you for it. I blamed you and blamed you because it was easier than… than admitting that maybe we were wrong. That maybe all of the shit you did wasn’t just to be an asshole, maybe it was because you… couldn’t help it sometimes. I’m not saying it was okay, I’m not….but I…”

Her chest ached then. It was like her ribs were suddenly a trap, snapping shut over her heart and lungs. She could hardly breathe. “We could have fixed this, Connor. You and me. We could have been okay. Maybe once you went off to college, got away from mom and dad… We could have made it work. Been. Like we were when we were kids. Been… twins again or whatever. I don’t know. But we could have… if you’d just talked to me. Just once. I know, I know I wouldn’t have listened but… We could have fixed things for us. Why didn’t you let us have that chance? Huh? Why?”

She was just sobbing now.

Zoe knew she looked crazy.

She’d shaved her head and now she was screaming at a grave, crying hysterically. It was almost worse that it had been almost two years. If it had been two months ago, maybe this would make sense to her, but it had been nearly two years and in some ways it was just now hitting her, it was just now real.

It was just now that she stopped being angry at him long enough to miss him.

They weren’t close.

Not at the end.

When they were little they were. Their mom dressed them identically. They used to pretend to be twins, because twins seemed so much cooler than being regular siblings.

But she missed him all the same.

His sarcastic comments.

Their shared looks of mutual disgust over their mom’s newest phase or obsession.

She missed having someone to sit in the backseat with her on long car rides to visit their grandparents, because sometimes the companionable silence had been… okay. Nice.

She missed him.

She’d hated him.

But she missed him. She missed the fact that she used to hope for better for them, but now there was no them, no Connor-and-Zoe as their grandma used to call them, no space between their names.

And she was just.

Broken.

Sobbing.

Beating her fists on the ground, howling.

Which was naturally when she heard a car door slam behind her.

Fuck.

This was not a great look on her, admittedly. She was probably going to miss her first semester in college because whoever just drove up would tell her parents and they would overreact and send her to some kind of grief... rehab or something. Zoe turned around furiously, intending to just keep screaming, keep yelling, intimidate the person interrupting her privacy into leaving, because it was that or utterly collapse.

And that.

Naturally.

Would be the first time that she would see him all summer. That would be the moment that he stumbled upon her, lost and broken and in the middle of what definitely looked like a complete mental collapse.

Evan looked skinnier. And possibly taller.

And he looked very, very scared to have happened upon her shouting at her brother’s grave at 6:30 in the morning.  

“Oh this is fucking perfect,” She said, screamed, shouted, whatever. She was an unstoppable force, she was pretty sure she would be able to punch through a brick wall if given the chance, rip a phonebook in half, she was so beyond anger, this wasn’t anger, this was just… pure unadulterated rage.

“Zoe?”

He was carrying flowers. And a book.

“What the actual fuck? What are you doing here, Evan?” Zoe said.

“I...um. I’ve been. Um.” He approached timidly.

“Nevermind. I don’t care. Just. Whatever.” She picked up her things, picked up Connor’s phone, and hurried toward her car.

“Wait, Zoe!”

She started to just. Out and out run. Like a little kid, like she was being chased. She couldn’t catch her breath, she was wheezing.

But then, somehow, he caught up with her, and somehow, caught her elbow, and somehow just… had a tiny travel sized pack of tissues on him. He handed it to her. She noticed he had dropped the flowers and the book.

“Please leave me alone,” She mumbled.

“I will…I will, I swear, I- I just. You don’t seem okay to drive.”

Zoe glared at him.

“Please, just… humor me. Wait five minutes.”

“Fine,” she said, swiping away a tear angrily.

Evan dropped her elbow. Took a few steps back, giving her space.

Fuck, she forgot that despite being a pathological liar he was also pathologically _nice._

Like no other person would find her in this situation and not immediately ask what the fuck had happened to her hair.

Hell, she wouldn’t if she happened upon herself.

“What are you even doing here?” She asked, crossing her arms over her chest, suddenly wishing very much that she had bothered to wear a bra.

“Oh,” Evan said, and she could see he was blushing. “Well. I. I leave for school in a few weeks and I’ve been…” He stopped, looking down at his shoes. “I know. That it probably sounds stupid. But I’ve been… reading that list of books that I found?”

“And what, you… come here to discuss them?”

She knew she should be nicer, she knew they had left things in a decent place when they met at the orchard that day.

But that was a good day.

Today was not one of those. This was not a “we all needed” the story he’d given them day. It wasn’t.

“I. Um. Yeah, I guess. Sort of,” Evan said, shrugging. “I noticed, a few weeks back, that um… there’s flowers and stuff at, um, most of the other…” He looked apologetic and didn’t say the word. “His used to have a lot of them. Just tons and tons… but lately. Um. Not really? So. Sometimes I stop on my way home from work.”

“You’re on your way home?” Zoe asked, eyes narrowed.

“Um. Yeah. Sometimes, not like a lot, but sometimes I’ll take the third shift. If there’s like, you know, a big shipment or something, I’ll you know. Work it. Mostly I work days… but. Sometimes…”

She nodded, taking big gulps of air, wondering if he was actually going to time it out to five full minutes she’d promised him, wondering if maybe she could just fucking die right here and save everyone on funeral costs or something.

“Zoe?”

“Yeah?”

“I… Are you okay? Can I do anything? E-even if the answer is leave, I just… How can I help?”

Zoe stared at him. Hard.

“Do you want to go somewhere?” Zoe asked then, suddenly.

Evan blinked. “With… with you?”

She nodded.

“I um… Yeah. I guess. If that’s okay?”

She nodded.

“Just… can I have just one second?”

She nodded again.

Watched as he walked swiftly, picking up the flowers. He placed them in front of Connor’s headstone, touched it for just a second, the way you might touch a friend’s shoulder, and turned back to Zoe. He walked fast back to her. “Where do you want to go?”

“Let’s…. Let’s get breakfast.”

“Okay.”

“I’ll drive,” She said, sort of shaking her keys.

“Sure.”

He got into the passenger seat of her car, like any of this was remotely normal. Zoe could tell he was watching her as she sped out of town, hitting the highway.

“Did you figure out where you’re going to school yet?” She asked.

“I um… yeah.” He gave her the name of the nearby state school.

She nodded.

“What about you?”

She told him.

“That’s… that’s really good, Zoe.”

She almost smiled.

She turned off the highway and into the parking lot for a small diner outside of town. They went inside and got seated, and Zoe took the coffee they offered her gratefully.

Evan kept his eyes focused on the menu.

She realized, suddenly, that they never really went on any proper dates together. They were always just at each other’s houses.

They placed their orders with a friendly, elderly waitress who told Zoe she thought her haircut was, “Very practical. I’ve been thinking about getting a chop myself.”

Once she left, silence fell over the table.

“You said before that you wished we could have met now,” Zoe said.

Evan nodded.

“So let's pretend. This is the first time we've ever met.”

He bit his lip, looking uncomfortable. Well. More uncomfortable.

“Hi,” She said, holding out her hand. “I’m Zoe.”

He took her hand carefully. “Evan.”

“Nice to meet you,” Zoe said, smiling.

“You too.” He smiled back at her.

“Do you live around here?” She asked.

“About five miles from here, yeah,” He answered.

“Are you in college?”

“I’m starting in the fall,” He said. “I took a year off after high school, actually. Just saving up some money. You know.”

“That’s cool.”

He nodded. “What about you?”

“I’m starting in the fall too,” She said, “I’m studying music education.”

“Really?” He said and his face lit up. “That sounds incredible.”

“Thanks,” She said, and she felt her face heat up. “What about you? What are you studying?”

He smiled. “I haven’t decided yet. I’m interested in Environmental Science and in English so. Maybe I’ll double major.”

“Impressive.”

“We’ll see.”

Their food arrived. She got waffles, he got pancakes.

They chatted more about school. They chatted a little about themselves, having a giggly debate over whether it was worse to pay for Nickelback music or secretly download it. Evan thought it was worse if you paid; Zoe thought going through the trouble to download it was way worse.

“So do you have any siblings?” She asked.

“I do,” Evan said, biting his lip. “Max and Jessie. They’re, um, my half siblings. They live with my dad in Colorado.”

She nodded.

She knew this of course. But. Since they were pretending to meet for the first time. She waited.

“You?” He said, sounding a little helpless.

“Yeah. I…. My brother died a few years ago.”

“I’m so sorry to hear that.”

“Yeah, it was… it’s been pretty hard, actually.”

Evan looked at her, and he looked just so sad. “Zoe… I don’t think I can do this.”

“I know,” She said, moving a piece of waffle through the syrup on her plate. “I can’t either. But it was nice for a minute.”

He nodded. “I like your new haircut,” He said eventually.

“Thanks,” Zoe said, even though she was sure he was full of it.

“I’m glad I got to see you again before we left for school,” Evan said, looking down at his plate. “I’ve been thinking about you a lot. Wondering how you were…”

“You could have just called.”

He nodded. “I know.”

Evan paid for breakfast, which was unnecessary, but Zoe let him. She drove them back to the cemetery, unabashedly asking Evan for directions to the plot.

“Thanks for breakfast.”

Evan nodded. “Thanks for the ride.”

He squeezed her hand before he got out of the car.

“Wait,” She said, getting out after him. “Can we pretend that this is the first time we met again? Just for a minute?”

“Why?”

“Because…” Zoe sighed, and then closed the distance between them, kissing him hard. He tasted like maple syrup and orange juice and she wished that she could kiss him hard enough that the two of them could get sucked back in time, into an alternate timeline, into another world where none of the awful, broken things had happened.

But they couldn’t do that. And they didn’t.

And Zoe broke the kiss, stepping back. “You know… I really loved you,” She said.

“I know,” Evan said. “I really… I loved you too.”

“Take care of yourself,” She said.

“You too.”

She got back in her car.

It was still only eight in the morning.

She wanted to head straight back to sleep.

Her mom was in the kitchen when Zoe got home.

“Zo, sweetie, did you just get home?” She said and Zoe realized she hadn’t turned around yet to look at her. “Please tell me you weren’t out all night.”

“No I… just got up early. Grabbed breakfast with a friend.”

“That’s nice,” Her mom said warmly, still busying herself with the coffee pot. “Who did you get breakfast with?”

“Mel,” Zoe lied.

“That’s great,” her mom said, finally turning around and then dramatically dropping the cup of coffee she held on the floor where is smashed, sending hot coffee flying. “Your hair!”

“I cut it,” Zoe said, shrugging. She hurried to get the broom, sweeping up the mess of broken ceramic pieces. Her mom stared for a minute, still, fixated on Zoe’s head.

“I’m sorry, sweetie, I just. I was _surprised_. You look…” Her eyes teared up suddenly.

“I know,” Zoe said suddenly. “I never really thought that we looked alike before.”

Funny how having less hair made her look like her dead brother who wore his long.

Her mom seemed to come back to herself, grabbing a towel from the drawer and mopping up the spilled coffee.

Once the broken pieces were swept away and the spilled coffee was washed off the floor, Zoe’s mom took her daughter’s face in her hands. “You look beautiful,” She said, kissing Zoe’s forehead.

“Thanks, mom. I’ll be right back.”

Zoe crept up to her room then, grabbing the bottle of nail polish from the target bag she’d gotten yesterday. She sat across the table from her mom, and then slid Connor’s phone across it. “Have you looked at this at all?”

Her mom nodded.

“Did you see the pictures?”

Her mother shook her head. “We only checked his texts and emails.”

“You should take a look,” Zoe said, uncapping the bottle of nail polish. She applied a thin stroke of black polish to her index finger. “You should look at the texts to me.”

“Why?”

“Look at the unsent message.”

Her mom looked at her tearfully after she read it. “Thank you, Zoe.”

Zoe tried to smile.

**Author's Note:**

> So if you're read my other fic, The Desperate Type, that one scene probably looks pretty damn familiar.


End file.
